To perform an operational task, such as updating for a device, on an information processing system being a management target, an operator (e.g., a system administrator) lightens the load of the task by using a process execution apparatus that executes procedural steps for the operational task in accordance with a specific process definition. Here, one example of such an operation task performed by use of a process execution apparatus is described with reference to FIG. 16. FIG. 16 is an illustration for use in describing one example of a traditional operational task.
As illustrated in FIG. 16, a process execution apparatus 700 executes a process 750 in which procedural steps S01 to S06 for an operational task are specified based on a specific process definition on an information processing system. For example, the process execution apparatus 700 performs updating for a server device 900a contained in the information processing system in step S01 and performs updating for a server device 900b contained in the information processing system in step S02. The content and result of the processing executed in the above way are recorded as an execution history 770.
Together with execution of each processing contained in a process, the process execution apparatus 700 sets a database for managing information regarding an information processing system. One such example database is a configuration management database (CMDB) 800. The CMDB 800 stores detailed information regarding a component, such as a server device and application contained in an information processing system and a network, as a configuration item (CI). For example, CI(svr1) corresponding to the server device 900a contained in the information processing system can include, as detailed information for the server device 900a, an IP address, model, and disk capacity. In such a way, the process execution apparatus 700 executes processing contained in a process, and alters a CI corresponding to a component being the target for the processing in accordance with the content of the processing, as setting processing.
If a trouble occurs in an operational task for an information processing system, it is necessary to allocate workers to a task for addressing the problem. If influence of the trouble is very large, one may need to pay the penalty or risk losing the trust of a customer. To deal with this, measures, such as running a simulation of the occurrence of troubles, are typically taken in designing a process to reduce the incidence of troubles in the process.
However, it is difficult to ascertain all kinds of the possibility of the occurrence of troubles, and although a problem is not found in designing, some trouble may occur in executing. Thus, in order to design a process that has a low incidence of troubles, it is important to extract issues from a result of an operational task based on a process executed in the past and utilize them for process design.
Here, one example cause of a trouble that is difficult to ascertain in designing is a collision of setting processing attempts on a CMDB made by a plurality of process execution apparatuses. As illustrated in FIG. 17, one example case is discussed in which a process execution apparatus 700a executes a process 750a of backing up data for a plurality of apparatuses in an information processing system in accordance with procedural steps S11 to S16 and a process execution apparatus 700b executes a process 750b of applying a patch to the plurality of apparatuses in the information processing system in accordance with procedural steps S21 to S26.
In this case, a situation is assumed in which, while the process execution apparatus 700a is executing setting processing for the CI(svr1) on the CMDB 800 in step S11, the process execution apparatus 700b starts executing setting processing for the same CI(svr1) in step S22. In this situation, because the process execution apparatus 700a is executing the setting processing for the CI(svr1), the process execution apparatus 700b cannot finish the setting processing for the CI(svr1) and the setting ends unsuccessfully. When such a collision of setting processing attempts for a CI on a CMDB occurs, if the issue from an execution history of each process execution apparatus is extracted and it is utilized for process designing, the same trouble can be prevented (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-333929).